In school, Kamran was never a fan of creative writing. He felt that his mind wasn’t imaginative enough to come up with compelling creative short stories, which would impress his English teacher. Because of this fact, he never really paid attention to poetry, it never got a chance in his eyes. Poetry was something he couldn’t understand, something he couldn’t relate to. It felt too far removed from his life for him to be engaged in it – oh and he found it so boring the way it was taught to him too.

However, during Kamran’s last years at school, his mother passed away! She was his rock, strength and inspiration! He felt he needed to release that tension and grief, and honour her.

One day, a school friend invited him to a Creative Writing class that his friend’s aunt (Efua Sey Koi-Larbi) was running with some kids at an organisation she worked at. Kamran went as it was with a group of friends and he thought they would have a laugh. And how wrong was he! They were taught about the basics of creative writing and the forms it comes in and the definition of it. It was broken down in such a simplistic and easy way that he fully understood it and started to relate to it in a way he never had before, it truly opened up his mind. The students were set a homework task to write a short story, a poem or any other form of creative writing they wanted to and bring it back to the next session, where they had to read it out. Kamran wrote a poem in tribute to his mum to pour his feelings out, but he cleverly wrote the poem in present tense so that the reader would think his mother was still here and alive. When he read it out, Efua and the rest of the class enjoyed it. Efua saw that gift and helped nurture it into what it is today.

Through this, Kamran found his passion. His passion was in expressing myself through poetry. It felt real and theraputic to him. He could write about anything! After that first poem he wrote in tribute to his Mum, he wrote another ten in about two weeks! And then Efua who had taken him under her wing asked him (but also suggested to him) that one of the poems he wrote was so good that he should perform it at a Black History Month event. Kamran jumped up at the chance (as he loved drama and acting) and said YES! Since then he has never looked back!

Over 100 written poems later, Kamran has been blessed with performing at various open mic events, fundraising events, and large/small scale community festivals including Peace Alliance, Festival of London Youth Arts, Jawdance, Word4Word, DJ Excalibah’s Sunday Selection, Chill Pill, Poetic Justice, Come Rhyme With Me, Kaleidoscope Community Festival, OneLove Community Festival, and Spotlight Presents– to name a few! He has also performed for Cherie Blair (ex-PM Tony Blair‘s wife), and David Lammy MP.

Kamran has been helped and encouraged by so many people on the Poetry and Spoken Word scene, and he has made friends with a lot of them especially the poets. He considers it a real blessing having that security in writing down his feelings on paper, and writing in the moment of that feeling, because he believes a moment of feeling like that should never be edited, no matter the feeling.

Kamran describes his poems as real, easy to understand and meaningful, but unique as they are so open, deep, and self-exposing. He has had a selection of his poetry published in The Gleaner newspaper as well as local community magazines and on various websites.
Kamran’s poetry also influenced him to make short films based around the subject matter of some of his poems. One of his short films Stalker was chosen to be screened exclusively online by the British Urban Film Festival (2010). Another poem Show Me Your Real Self inspired him to make a short film of the same name in association with YEP Enfield, and his short film about unemployment In The Waiting Line was screened for a month in 2010 on their website to promote their Unemployment Awareness Month.

You have a look at some of the poems he has written, that have been published online and in print right here!